


Broody

by owlaholic68



Series: Canary in a Coal Mine [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Dragonborn (D&D), Eggs, F/F, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Married Couple, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-19 02:19:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17592779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlaholic68/pseuds/owlaholic68
Summary: Egg madness is a biological feature of dragonborn, a way to ensure that future offspring will be well taken care of. But sometimes it goes too far.





	1. Chapter 1

“I’m worried,” Rosie admits, voice hardly louder than a whisper. “I mean, I’ve been worried for some time, but now I truly think something needs to be done. She does too.” She gives a furtive glance over her shoulder at the door to the small cottage.

“Is she eating any more?” Jessica asks, keeping her voice down too.

Rosie shakes her head. “Not really. She’ll eat a little if I put food in front of her or if I agree to hold the egg while she eats, but it’s still not a lot. And she’s…not talking anymore, not more than a few words here and there.” She puts a hand on her neighbor’s shoulder. “Be careful, Jess. Just be cautious with her right now.”

“I’ll try my best.”

As Jessica walks into their home for her weekly checkup, Rosie wrings her hands and settles herself behind Canary, shivering as her wife’s bright green eyes track her movement. Rosie slowly sits and strokes Canary’s neck scales, humming a comforting tune as Jessica approaches.

“Easy now,” Rosie says when Canary’s shoulders raise. “She’s just here to make sure little Cashew is healthy and warm enough, and to take a look at you too. Settle down now, dear.”

Canary stills at the sound of her voice, eyes still eerily unblinking. She’s curled around the egg and, unlike last time Jessica visited, makes no movement to uncover it. Jessica reaches one hand forward and Canary growls. Jessica freezes and looks up at Rosie, who shakes her head. Canary settles again. Jessica slowly reaches her hand forward and down, further down, towards the moon-white marbled egg-

-And shrieks in pain and shock, trying to jerk her forearm away. Rosie screams too, tugging uselessly at her wife’s arm and yelling at her to stop it, let go, and when did this escalate to a _biting_ situation?

“Ow, _fuck,_ what the _hell!”_ Jessica braces her boot on Canary’s shoulder and tries to push away, but Canary’s teeth are firmly embedded into her arm. “Okay, sorry about this!” She grasps for the pendant around her neck and stares Canary in the eyes. “Drop it! Let go of me!”

The words have an ache of magic about them. Canary flinches and pauses, then shakes off the effect and holds on.

“Let me try!” Rosie grasps the edges of Canary’s reptilian jaw in her hands and silently apologizes for what she’s about to do. With an immense effort of calm, she lowers her voice and sweetens it while making a few symbols with her fingers against Canary’s scales. “Hey, songbird. It’s me.”

Canary’s eyes blink up at her, then glaze over. Her jaw loosens and Rosie is able to pry her fangs out of Jessica’s arm. “Good, good girl, that’s right. We’re all going to stay calm and not attack anyone.” Rosie pauses to swipe a dirty hand across her cheeks. What has she done, casting a charm spell on the love of her life, who trusts her so completely? What is she doing, breaking that trust? “Everything’s fine, e-everything’s f-fi-fine-”

“Gods above, she’s in bad shape,” Jessica hisses. From the corner of Rosie’s eye, she can see the faint flow of healing energy as Jessica expends a lot of energy to patch up her profusely bleeding arm. “This is – I don’t have to tell you how bad this is, Rosie. She’s not well. She needs to get away from that fucking egg and she needs help.”

“I know,” Rosie cries, cradling her wife and the egg and her _family._ “I know, I – I know. Okay.” She steadies. Her charm spell only lasts an hour. “We’ll keep the egg here by the fire and I’ll – I’ll lock Canary in the shed. She might be able to get out eventually if she tries, but I’ll block the door with the wheelbarrow. Oh, MoonMother, this is – this is t-terrible.” She catches her breath from another panicked sob and stands, dragging Canary up with her. “Jess, I’ve got this in hand. Just – just leave and take care of yourself.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow to make sure you’re okay,” Jessica promises. Good, faithful Jessica. “I’ll talk to Emilio about getting some enchanted warmth blankets for you to keep the egg in, and I’ll try to cook up a sleeping draught so maybe Canary can sleep some of this off.” She wraps her injured arm in her cloak and hurries out the door, leaving them alone.

“I’m sorry.” Rosie loosens the egg from Canary’s protective grasp and sets it on the edge of the oven. There’s some resistance, but after a bit of cooing and coercing, Rosie is able to free it and lead Canary outside. “I’m so sorry, darlin’, I – I just didn’t know what to do. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

The shed isn’t very big. With Canary’s confused but eager help, they clear out the gardening tools and drag in a bedroll, a handful of torches, and a few jugs of water. Rosie also stashes some nonperishable food in the hopes that Canary will feel like eating something. Then she kisses her wife, forces herself to smile, and closes the shed door. With heavy heart she locks it, bars it, and pushes the heavy wheelbarrow in front of the door.

Then it’s time to wait. Rosie checks on the egg.

Fifty-nine minutes tick over into one hour. There’s a crash and a yell from the shed. A wordless roar of rage and frustration, then Canary is wailing Rosie’s name and banging on the door of the shed hard enough to make the hinges rattle and the wheelbarrow groan.

Rosie puts her hands over her ears and puts her legs up. She buries her head between her knees and cries. Oh MoonMother, she thought she had emptied herself of all the tears a human being could produce.

What seems like hours later, Canary quiets and Rosie drags herself to standing. The least she can do is make sure her wife knows she hasn’t been completely abandoned.

Canary hasn’t had many words lately. Right now, she only seems to have one, and it’s Rosie’s name, repeated softly, loud enough to be heard through the shed wall as Rosie slowly approaches with trembling hands fisted in her gardening apron.

“C-Canary?”

“Rosie?” There’s the sound of shuffling, then Canary’s voice comes louder but still choked. “Rosie, what’s going on?”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You – you bit Jessica when she tried to look at Cashew, and I needed to – to get you off her, and I had no other choice.”

Canary sniffles. “I – I _bit_ Jessica? Did I hurt you?” She growls and slams her fist against the door. “Did I _hurt you?”_

“No!” Rosie puts her hands up even though Canary can’t see her right now. “No, dear, you would never hurt me. I’m fine. C-Calm down, you didn’t even seriously hurt Jessica. She’s mostly healed now anyway.”

“And the egg? Where is it? Why don’t I have it?”

Rosie sighs and steps up to the shed wall next to the wheelbarrow. She sits in the dirt and presses her hand to the rough-hewn wood of the shed wall. It’s imperative that she choose her words carefully here. They’d spoken about the egg madness that had been infecting Canary, but only a little bit. If she was to be frank with herself, neither of them had thought it would ever progress this far.

“You’re sick, dove. You’re not yourself, and,” she swallows a lump in her throat and presses forward, “and it’s breaking my heart. I don’t know what this egg is doing to you, but it’s driving you mad. You need help, and I’m sorry, but you can’t be near Cashew right now. For your own safety. We can’t risk it until we figure out what to do. I _promise_ you that we will figure this out. I love you, Canary. I promise.”

Rosie only hopes that she will be able to fulfill that promise.

* * *

She comes back every hour until night falls. Canary has gone back to not saying much. Her addled vocabulary has expanded to include some potentially concerning additions:

 _Egg. Now._ And, better, when Rosie says good night, _Love you._

Rosie doesn’t sleep that night, nor the next. She buries her head under the pillow in the too-cold nest bed and tries to ignore Canary’s distressed noises as her wife slowly loses her mind.

* * *

“I think you need to leave,” Rosie admits four days later. “There’s a caravan in town right now that could use an extra guard through the woods.”

“No.”

“I know, but this isn’t working. We can’t keep you locked up in there and just hope that this goes away.”

“No.” Canary whines the word. She said that not having the egg was making her physically ache, and nothing Jessica had tentatively tried had worked to get rid of that need.

“Just for a week, maybe two at the most. Go smash some goblins. Get your mind off this and get some fresh air. I’ll be right here. _We’ll_ be right here when you get back.”

There’s the harsh scraping sound of Canary’s clawed fingers against the wood of the door. “No,” she wails, “no, _no,_ I can’t – Rosie – don’t ask this of me, _no, it hurts,_ I can’t – can’t leave you – don’t-”

“I’m sorry, I’m s-sorry,” Rosie leans her shoulder against the other side of the door and brushes her bangs from her skin. “I’m sorry, turtledove, I’m so sorry, but I don’t know what else we can do, and I’m worried – I’m worried you’re not going to get better and I just want you to stop hurting. I – I love you and I want you to be yourself again.”

“You really think this is the best idea?” Canary’s voice quiets. “You always want the best for me, darlin’, and you really believe that this will help? That I will get better this way? That you’ll be okay alone?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Then I’ll leave. But I _hate_ this, and I’m – I’m _scared,_ rosebud, and – and I want you to Charm me when the time comes, because I don’t know if I’m really going to be able to do this on my own. So grab my gear and set me up, and then I don’t want to give myself a chance to bail.”

 _No,_ Rosie wants to say, but instead she bites her lip and replies, “okay. Okay. We’ll do this tomorrow. C-Can I sleep with you tonight?”

“Yeah. I won’t run if you open the door.”

And Canary doesn’t. After making sure the egg in the house is still doing alright, Rosie locks them in the shed, and she holds her wife for what could be the last time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canary deals with an unsettling situation.

_Dearest Rosie,_

_I’m scared._

Canary glances up from her writing, but the scratch of ink pen on parchment hasn’t woken her companions.

_Not for myself, but for someone else. How did you ever manage, with me? How did you not falter, rosebud, seeing a spark of madness in my eyes whenever I held the egg?_

_The first time with this Book was bad enough, but at least I was mostly just surprised and confused. We all were. Even Steven, I think. I mean, the kid likes books, but he blasted me to try to get this cursed Book back. And the way he looked when he was reading it…it was blank. Mindless. Is that what you had to deal with?_

She looks over at Steven, curled up on the ground with his hat clutched in his arms. He looks far too young like this. Sure, half-elves are older than they look, but Steven says he recently dropped out from whatever wizardly school he had been attending. He’s younger than Canary, than all of them.

_We were happy to write it off as a freak incident, but then it happened again the next day. The day after that, he was twitchy and weird, weirder than normal. Then he tried to mind-control me to get it the day after. It’s not stopping. Sometimes he can restrain himself, but sometimes he hurts for it, and I hate it because I understand._

Between Canary and Steven sleeps Gisil, one hand on her mace. She’d tried her best to calm Steven, but the thrall of that Book was too much. Now she’d taken to standing in between them when things inevitably went wrong. But she’s frightened of this new threat too. And frustrated, oh so frustrated with herself that she can’t heal Steven of this curse.

 In the corner, Ralafir is curled up, his eyes glassy in his elven trance. He’d be taking next watch, the last one before sunrise. Always keeping one keen eye on Steven now, a silent shadow. The first one to restrain him at the first sign of betrayal.

_By the time you get this letter, hopefully I won’t still need help. Or I’ll be dead at the Order’s hands. Gods above, Rosie, I haven’t even told you everything that’s happened with that, and I don’t know if I should, if it’s even safe. I can at least say that we – or I, I guess – got the book when I uh may have ripped the Book out of the Archmage’s hands when he almost-arrested us, and I actually made him really angry, so…_

_Enough about that. It’s manageable. That we can deal with._

_I miss you, rosebud. I miss you and I love you and I’m so scared because I don’t think any of us can break this – and – and there was a dragonborn ship at port, and what if they have eggs and I see them and now our group has two maddened people to deal with?_

_Please help. Please reply. Send a bird if you can, I just need to hear that you’re safe and I don’t know what to do and-_

The force of her clumsy writing snaps the pen in half. Ink spills across Canary’s fingers like blood. She curses under her breath and wipes her scaly hands on the fabric of her bag. Her wrist brushes the solid corner of the Book and she flinches.

The letter isn’t ruined. Only a few stray drops of ink got on it. But something in it, in the panicked words across the page, makes Canary’s gut churn. This isn’t – she can’t do this. She needs to keep her head. That’s why they’ve entrusted her with the Book, after all, because she can take care of herself (and also can knock out Steven if needed). She can protect the others, she can _do_ this for them.

For all the time it had taken to write, the letter burns up quick in the dull embers of the evening’s fire. Canary watches it crumble and cradles her bag to her chest. It’s not enough to soothe the gnawing ache in her chest.

The paper burns and Canary plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing like a good ol' interparty conflict to get things going...
> 
> In my most recent session, we came across (stole from the Chief of the Magic Police) a book that kind of thralled our Warlock character, Steven. In order to try to snap him out of it, Gisil grabbed it and threw it to Canary, and Steven Eldritch-Blasted her to try and get it back, and then we had to restrain him, and then he FINALLY passed his Wisdom save. The DM just informed us that he's going to have to do another save every day while we still have the book...

**Author's Note:**

> Featuring my D&D Dragonborn Barbarian, Canary! Exploring some of her backstory and the reasons why she left home.
> 
> Have you ever had to deal with broody chickens? It's kind of scary, and I can only imagine how it would be if you were a sentient humanoid creature that suddenly went inexplicably off the rails.


End file.
